Sony Once Again Takes A Leaf From Nintendo's Playbook In Japan

No chance. Sony sucks.

Is the whole point of region-locking it so that overseas people don’t gobble them up for cheap? I know that a Japanese region lock means you can’t use NTSC—U or PAL carts, but surely you can make regional Nintendo accounts, and buy those versions digitally, no?

Also, don’t most games offer language and/or subtitle settings? Unless Japan versions don’t. (EDIT: dmcc0 says that they typically don’t.)

It'll be interesting to see if this tactic will pay off for Sony.

The success of the first Switch was so good and Nintendo became so dominant, it's no surprise developers and publishers want their games on Nintendo systems. At the same time Nintendo has the best first party releases of all three major video game console producers. Sony really is having an uphill struggle against their biggest rival. I don't see any reason to get a PS5, when I can play so many good games on TV and on the go on my Switch 2.

If you can't beat them...

@LazyDaisy It'll only play Japanese carts and they only work on the Japanese eShop - they don't work with overseas accounts. Also only have Japanese language options AFAIK.

edited for clarity

Other companies can only copy Nintendo, but they cannot come even close to the perfection as Nintendo is in every way!

No no no, over on Push Square the gang say Nintendo are not competition.
When all along I say it’s a home console it’s competition. And of course they are and this proves it.

@dmcc0 I’ll have to double check this, but I don’t believe the game carts themselves are region locked. My understanding is that consoles purchased outside of Japan, and the multi-language model sold in Japan, should be able to read Japanese carts just fine. I think non-Japanese consoles and the more expensive Japanese language console are broadly the same functionally.

If I’m wrong about this, it’d come as quite a shock.

EDIT: I could be misreading what you meant. If you’re saying the Japanese-language console can only read Japanese carts, then I believe you’re entirely correct! But I don’t think the carts themselves have any sort of region lock built in. (Which is to say, they should be fine on non-Japanese consoles, but not-Japanese games won’t be fine on ~97% of Japanese consoles.)

@dmcc0 they can’t lock Japanese language options. If the Japanese rom supports English it will be playable in English even on region locked consoles.

@jobvd that reminds me of the good old days, chanting ‘$ony $ucks!’ outside Michael Jackson’s hotel when they were beefing 😆

Well, my PS5 machine is Fat model and can read ALL region games.
My PS5 machine is my number 1 console from all my video game machines (Nintendo & PlayStation) I have.

It’s a good move to boost sales. Need to complete for gamers time. They won’t beat Nintendo numbers and Nintendo has nothing to fear but it could help drive more competition and push for better games/service

Personally I don’t like the situation Xbox is having as it l gives PlayStation too much power to do as they please. My thoughts of Nintendo is the same, too much power they do the same. Mario Kart World imo is a boring game that’s nowhere worth its asking price and the greed for charging for demos. Used to be a friendly company, now a greedy one. Competition could fix that and make them friendly again.

Sensible.

With the weak yen they want to be at a price where people will actually buy it, but tourists and scalpers would swoop in like vultures if they didn't lock the region at this price point.

@Maxz Yeah, maybe I wasn't clear enough. From what I've read the Japanese-only console will only play carts from Japan. Those carts do work in other region consoles, but no guarantee they'll have a language you can understand.

@darkswabber Just going by what I've read. The language on the console is locked to Japanese so menus etc can't be changed and you can only register an account from Japan. If there's an in-game option to select another language, you might be able to do so, but if it just matches the system language then it'll select the Japanese version. From memory, a lot of eShop games in Japan don't have other language options - even though they would in other parts of the world. I'd assume Japanese physicals would be mostly similar in that regard.

The whole State of Direct last night was an attempt to appeal to Japanese fans. They were trying to get people excited that several games announced for Switch were coming to the PS5 as well. The whole format of the Direct was very ‘Nintendo comfy’.

Sony probably figured out they’ve left money on the table in Japan by ignoring it so far. I wonder if the stories of the PS5 ‘only being halfway through its life’ and will continue to be supported was the start of trying to get a more casual and family based customer to buy into the machine. They’re going to need a lot more stuff like Astrobot to fix the game they caused in the first five years.

@jobvd Sony hasn't been great since the PS3 era, aside from Spiderman which is on PC and the odd Ratchet game also PC.. oh and astro bot nice pack in/starter game but...so was Wii Sports and that got more games in that series they got nothing really to offer, other a over priced limited PC console sure graphics are good for now but with the lack of exclusive games if you really want the best graphics and game range your just get a actual gaming PC man I miss stuff like the PSP and PS Vita still use mine they were great handhelds that were Also region free.

Region locking, mandatory online connections, day-on patches, Game-Key cards… Why do they have to make gaming so much hassle?

Dear Nintendo and Sony, I’ll happily take a region locked console in the uk for 150 off in the future. Thank you.

@RoboCube That's why it's so deeply worrying what is happening with XBOX at the moment.
And people are absolutely nuts cheering and celebrating for XBOX to go down, completely unaware of the dire consequences when that happens.

The result will be that Sony will have pretty much a monopoly of the Major console market and will drive prices up even more and do even less effort on hardware and software front.
So you will end up paying even more for less!

We need XBOX as a competition lever against Sony and now also Nintendo, who has gone down the wrong path too with price hikes, delevering less for more, with expensive DLC packs that contain less and less, filing ridiculous patents, etc.

It's a crying shame what is happening with XBOX right now, due to a clueless CFO at Microsoft.
I have both XBOX Series X and a PS5 and the XBOX is a superior console. /sigh

Maybe I'm stupid but I don't understand how a region-locked unit is any cheaper. Isn't it like the same hardware components? And can't the region-locking be bypassed with a firmware patch nowadays?

@Medic_alert remember those days. In the UK we were 6-12 months behind the US and Japan and many games didnt come across to PAL.

As a JRPG fan, it was tough.

Thankfully that has changed.

@Jeronan Microsoft bet on GamePass which is a much more detrimental (dis)service to the industry. They dug their own grave and seem hell bent on jumping into it.

I say good riddance. Microsoft is never a benefit to any industry it enters.

@Switching Sure. As long as we’re not talking about consumer-friendly tactics. Or game preservation that isn’t locked behind a subscription service. Or the Wii U. Or the GameCube. Or the 64. Or the Virtual Boy.

@8bit-Man No pain, no gain.

@OmnitronVariant for us gamers, GamePass was actually incredible value for money.

I have had GamePass Ultimate for years and saved myself a lot of money.
I have been able to try out games that end up not being worth their money and so saved myself for wasting a lot of money over the years.
So to each their own. Gamepass was actually very popular for Microsoft, as even Sony started offering their variant with PS Plus Premium.
If it was such a disservice by evil Microsoft as you say, then Sony wouldn't have started offering a similar service.

But the problem now is the Microsoft CFO imposed a 30% profit margin requirement on XBOX Division (which is unheard of in the game industry and outright impossible), is why we suddenly see the console price hike and the crazy price hike on GamePass Ultimate.
So I downgraded my GamePass to Premium for now.

Its absolutely nuts to be honest, as XBOX Division was actually doing really well and delivered around 12-14% profit margins, compared to Sony Playstation division that barely makes 6-7% in profit margins.

I used to love Sony back in the day.

Then they moved HQ to the USA and everything went downhill from there.

I will never buy another console from them again.

@Jeronan Incredible value for money, but it was significantly detrimental to developers and incentivised slop games that maximise return for a flat subscription based return on investment. It completely upends a fundamental principle in capitalism where a good product will tend to sell more, yet with a subscription, all that matters is playtime, and since the game is "free", people might still play it even if it shouldn't get as much playtime as an actually good game.

A big topic that I won't go into too much here, but none of us should be sad the day GamePass is over.

@RoboCube I think you mistook Astro's Playroom for Astro Bot there. Astro's Playroom's the PS5 pack-in, pre-installed on every console. Astro Bot's a full-on retail release and typically a separate purchase (although given how much of a tentpole game it is, PS5 bundles including the Astro Bot game do in fact exist--which may have helped stir up the earlier-mentioned confusion to begin with)...

@Axecon I’m by no means an expert on this so take everything I say with an ocean of salt, but I think it’s less about manufacturing costs, and more about trying to tailor prices to specific regions without causing too much imbalance in the global market. The reason being that if one region is significantly cheaper than another, that will create an incentive for people to buy consoles in the cheapest region rather than in their own.

You could make the prices flat across all regions so there’s little difference after converting currency, but this can result in some regions getting shafted if there’s been a big upset in exchange rates.

Nintendo priced the cheapest version of the Switch 2 at roughly 50% more than Switch 1 in both Japan and the US. The unsurprisingly unpopular multi-language system sold in Japan is significantly more expensive: roughly 110% more expensive than the Switch 1 (which is to say, 210% of the price — over twice as much). That’s a difficult pill to swallow, which perhaps explains why only 2.9% of Switch 2 buyers in Japan have swallowed it.

If Nintendo were to only release a single, non-region-locked console in Japan, then selling it at the more expensive price would alienate a lot of the Japanese market, while selling at the cheaper price would make it seriously cheap for Americans (to give one example): $322 vs $450 back home. This wasn’t as much of an issue at the beginning of the Switch 1’s life cycle, but since then the the dollar has gone from around ¥110 to around ¥150.

There could be more to it than this, but I think the above plays a big part.

Switch needs a worldwide price drop

@Switching perfection? Nintendo switch 2 were bricking some of its consoles at launch far from perfection,

@Pillowpants there’s a large portion of people who buy systems to annually play fifa and cod. FIFA runs at 60fps on ps5 and they have cod. People will continue to buy PlayStation.

@datamonkey so would alot of other people

@OmnitronVariant Tell that to the Indie developers who have actually massively profited from GamePass, as it helped them exposing their games to a large audience.

Those big capitalistic corpo studios you talking about, like EA, Activision and Ubisoft, etc... they didn't release their games day one on GamePass anyway. Only MS first party titles were day one on GamePass, along with smaller studios that got sponsored by MS to launch day one on GamePass. And again, those smaller studios actually massively profited from this.

For us gamers it's actually worse on Playstation, as Sony wants you to double dip in both PS+ Premium and buying their first party titles at full price. As Sony only releases their own titles at least a year later on their most expensive subscription tier.

So honestly, you have it all backwards and you are just repeating the echo chamber of those greedy corporate suits at EA and Ubisoft and their ilk! Which are actually the worst to have happened to the Game industry, with infesting all our games with micro transactions, DLCs, season passes, etc.... just to fleece as much money out of our pockets!
They don't deserve our sympathy at all!

Gamepass isn't going away. In fact, GamePass was actually quite late to the party... as the whole Movie and TV series business already went full on subscription mode long before that. So the game industry is just catching up.

PS. Completely forgot about this, but unless you have been living under a rock.... both EA and Ubisoft have had their own subscription service for years already! Hence why they try to bring down MS and GamePass, as it's competition!

@Jeronan https://www.purexbox.com/news/2025/06/developer-reveals-surprisingly-critical-feedback-after-launching-on-xbox-game-pass

And there’s a lot more stories like that, not all out in public due to contract clauses etc., but since I can’t reveal my indie sources just treat this as anecdotal — though not the above, that’s factual. But do google if you actually care about this topic. Devaluing games hurts everyone, but most of all indies.

@sixrings I never said they wouldn't. I just said Sony is having an uphill struggle. What's your point?

@OmnitronVariant There are always ups and downsides with everything in life. So in business as well.

There will always be cases were a GamePass release didn't work out for a studio.

But for a lot of (especially) smaller studios, GamePass actually helped them get their game out of the door and made the difference of going bankrupt and not releasing their game or finishing it and launching on GamePass. So we have plenty of those examples as well.

And of course, like in any Capitalistic scenario, larger studios that develop bigger games will get more money from MS to launch on GamePass.
This is only logical, as bigger budgets are involved and hence they will get better compensation, as such games also generate more hype and exposure.

Either way, a game studio is not forced to launch their games on XBOX GamePass. Plenty of games, both indie and AAA titles still release normally in the XBOX Store.

But the fact remains, that GamePass wasn't even the first subscription service for games. Both EA and Ubisoft had already their own game launchers with own online store for their games and offered a monthly subscription to access their game catalog.

So of course those big bobo's have tried to take down XBOX GamePass and try to feed negativity around it over the years, to try kill off any competition. While at the same time still going in bed with MS and offer subscription add-ons to GamePass to gain access to their titles. Corporate capitalism and hypocrisy at its finest.

Nah I don’t care about Ubisoft or EA I don’t buy their games. I’m basing my opinion on developers who chose to publish on gamepass, and on common sense and reasoning.

It’s ok to admit you just want access to games cheaply. But don’t try to make a subscription service into a morally defensible solution to any medium of art.

@OmnitronVariant I am not defending GamePass in any way.

I am still buying a lot of games outright, as not every game launches on GamePass day one or ever!
It's mostly MS own first party titles that launch Day One and a handful of MS sponsored titles, which is no different than all the exclusivity deals Sony buys from Studios to cut out XBOX gamers.

All I am saying is the whole GamePass outcry is just hysterical and pure overreacting.
Especially when EA, Ubisoft, Amazon (Prime), etc have had their own launchers, digital stores and subscription service long before GamePass.

GamePass was actually created as answer to MS losing the exclusivity war with Sony, who was buying up major studios left and right and turn their games and major franchises into Playstation Exclusives.

@Jeronan Weird gamepass was their answer when they then subsequently went on to buy major studio left, right and center themselves and shut most of them down. But OK.

It doesn't matter that EA and Ubisoft did this prior, doesn't make it good. And subscriptions for movies and tv shows (while also bad, IMO) are an entirely different thing. Remember these are passive experiences traditionally served via time slots on cable and broadcast networks; streaming is a natural progression, though subscriptions are definitely not and cause similar problems to subs for videogames.

@shiningpikablu252 It's still not really something like Little Big Planet, or Crash or even the original Ratchet and Clank series, to me it just seems like a tech demo while fun it's not enough to buy a PS5 for.

@Jeronan Easy solution don't buy Playstation, last one I brought new was a PS Vita, Microsoft have down faster then Sega tho Sony could easily turn this around if they made use of their ips tho same with Microsoft they own Rare IPS, Crash Bandicoot, Spyro...

@dmcc0

This, as I understand it. Its less about the region locking and more the language locking. Which makes sense: Nintendo isn't trying to control sales of games by region; they are trying to keep their home region from being drained of hardware by export shenanigans.

@Itsthingking

Citation needed. Note, "banning consoles for using pirated/ripped games" is not bricking. The consoles still function just fine, they simply aren't allowed onto Nintendo's networks anymore.

@RoboCube

Yeah, but that would require Sony to actually invest in making games other than giant GAAS moonshots and prestige VGA-bait titles. And Sony seems to hate doing that ( probably because nobody inside Sony gets rewarded for doing bread-and-butter work ).

@Olliemar28
You've got a grammatical error, sir.
"That's not to say it hasn't doesn't well,"

Nintendo has been on top of it since the Switch released, getting most things right, while i am not the biggest advocate of NSO rental service, its been more affordable than psplus or gamepass, i would have preferred virtual console though.

The Switch has perhaps the best library in the history of gaming, Nintendo has delivered a ton of great games on the platform, whilst i can't say the same for Sony, all the great games they had on earlier systems have been forgotten, we spent so much time on games like Singstar, buzz, Uncharted, Killzone, Infamous now all gone.

@LazyDaisy Apparently anything you do on these consoles is only Japanese, meaning you can only use Japanese carts, Japanese accounts and Japanese language, and since most games determine their language by the system language it means you're mostly stuck using it only in Japanese.
Also, Japanese accounts are extremely locked compared to other regions as you need a Japanese address to pay with credit card, PayPal, or even purchase gift cards from amazon (saying that from experience), so you also have to pay marked up prices on gift cards from sites like Play Asia. In the long run it is a very bad deal for a non-Japanese user but a very good deal for Japanese that don't care about only buying games in Japan.

And it was quite honestly the most interesting reveal during that state of play...

I lived in Japan twice during the 90s and from what I remember $1 was worth around 85 yen. Today it’s about 154 yen! Are you sure these exchange rates were last seen in the 90s? Might be more like the 70s.

The sad thing is that those were the region free prices (or near about) a few years back in Japan. Ridiculous how expensive it is now. But hopefully it helps those that still want to get it who don't yet.

And right on cue ridiculous fanboys showed up. Gaming is open to everyone. Who cares about who "copied" who?😐

PS5 is a great console and an excellent value at $350 (everyone would import from Japan if it weren't region-locked!) but I think the Switch 2 (like the original Switch) will win in Japan because of portability. (Physical media on Switch vs. PS5 digital edition might also be an issue, though of course you can add a PS5 disc drive for $80.)

PSP sold more units in Japan than the original PlayStation, and wasn't far behind the PS2.

@AllBLK Good point, but I think it's just in fun (for NintendoLife at least), like calling the Steam Machine a "GabeCube". Also it's interesting to see how ideas evolve over time. I always thought Sony's PS Move was a mostly useless ripoff of the WiiMote, but then I saw someone using two of them with Media Molecule's amazing Dreams to sculpt a video game in real time. Dreams is one of the most incredible pieces of software on the PS4, and a killer app (maybe the only one) for PSVR + PS Move.